Stay
by Sky Samuelle
Summary: James and Juliet deal with the impact of their first tumble into sexual intimacy. Compatible with 'Collide' but also indipendent from it .


**STAY**

**Author: Sky Samuelle**

**Fandom: Lost**

**Ship: James/Juliet**

**Rating: Mature.**

**Warnings: Sexual situations involved.**

**Summary: James and Juliet deal with the impact of their first tumble into sexual intimacy. Compatible with Collide.**

**AN: This was for makealist, who writes amazing Suliet fiction and has bravely suggested a smutty one-shot from Juliet's POV, for Emmy **lj user="martinigirl15"** , who was kind enough to beta it, to evanesco75, who left me with inspiring, in-depth reviews.**

If there's one thing Juliet Burke hates above all else, it 's feeling powerless.

That disposition of hers led to the end of her marriage – it's consuming enough to pretend your husband is screwing anything with legs and boobs and you don't care about it, but it's unacceptable when you begin to feel you are pretending only because you can't stop him from humiliating you- and it slowly hardened her enough to withstand both Ben's obsessive interest and her original fear of him. It eventually dissolved her infatuation with Jack to nothing the moment he betrayed his promises and left her to rot on the island: there was simply no point in suffering over someone who was capable of abandoning her there, knowing how desperate she was to leave.

Juliet hates feeling helpless to her emotions the most. She has refused to succumb to her fear of Ben, to her longing for Rachel, to her desire to belong with someone, somewhere. To be truly needed, for once, not for her supposed academic brilliance or her body or her ability to reassure and to sustain, but for the complete package. She has promised herself that she wasn't going to be a mess anymore. She rebuilt herself to be anything but, and even if some days she hates what she has crafted herself into, the days she is grateful for that protection are many more.

She is not going backwards, she is done with waiting to be saved.

In leaving this island, she understands she would be giving up on coming home ever again, but at least she would be _free_. Free of the endless wait, of Ben's ghost, of the past that will happen to her more or less three decades ahead.

Freedom's call is haunting, hard to resist. She has stayed for James, for the childlike plea in his eyes as he said 'give me two weeks' and meant 'don't leave me here alone'.

She has stayed because he needed it, because she liked being needed, because after letting down Rachel, leaving her alone to face cancer and motherhood, she could not have left behind someone else she cared about.

She refuses to believe she would be so stupid as to fall into Kate Austen's shadow again. Falling in love with James is absolutely not an option, but she still slept with him twice.

_Twice._

They did it first that night of New Year's, using alcohol and its artificial euphoria as an excuse to act on their pent-up frustrations and desires – it was needful, untamed and superb- and then there were two_ weeks_ of nothing (everything) where James sought out her presence constantly for everything or anything plausible that came into his mind, despite his being so very cautious of her every reaction to him that it made her painfully self-conscious.

And then… then there was last night, a sweet, addictive delirium that proved beyond all possible doubt that their first tumble into intimacy was not a fluke.

Last night, one minute she was sitting before her vanity and combing her hair while James paced across her bedroom and ranted about Miles' bothersome nature, and the very next she was heavy-lidded, her legs wobbly, as she watched him in the mirror, suckling on her neck and pounding into her from behind.

James has spent so long a time waiting for a slim chance of revenge that the waiting became a second nature to him…every day they are here, he's looking over his shoulder for Kate, for John, even if he knows they will probably never return. He doesn't know how to teach himself to stop waiting. Juliet understands this in the way she does so many other things about him, clearly and without needing his verbal confirmation.

Perhaps it's the reason she stays, knowing that if she left he would add her to the long list of people who have walked out of his life and he would remain here, alone, waiting for just one more person.

The remorse of abandoning Rachel never leaves completely; Juliet still hates herself for needing a goddamn job to feel complete.

Yet, there are moments lately when she feels this glowing warmth within permeating her sweetly and she thinks that's how happiness is supposed to feel like. It's when James smiles at her across the room, his dimples making the sight of him so endearing, when his southern drawl washes over her unexpectedly, when he puts his arm around her waist or shoulders in public (she never had that, not with Edmund or Goodwin or much less Jack) or just last morning, when she awoke to the sensation of his lips trailing lingering, open-mouthed kisses from the crook of her neck to the sensitive hollow of her elbow.

They might amount to just friends-with-benefits for as long as this tide of lust sweeps them over and it wouldn't necessarily be a defeat. He's her best friend and she loves him as such until those burning, aching moments she wants him so badly that she can't think straight. She doesn't understand what this means, but she knows she's tired of that grand thing called Love. It was never very kind to her, always taking away too much and never giving back enough.

Yet all of that is not enough to get her to push him away.

Even now, as he takes her face between his hands so gently, she finds she has no desire to run. She only leans into his touch, letting her worries about long-term consequences fade into the background of her mind. Experience can advise her otherwise, but her instincts bully her into staying put, giving in, holding onto the feelings.

James' tongue parts her lips to find hers, and as soon the kiss gets heated he pulls her body hard into his.

It's easy to wrap her arms around his broad shoulders and melt against him as she kisses him deeper, giving back as good as she's receiving. If being with him was any less easy, less natural, she would be already gone but this…this is all she needs to keep breathing. To feel free, in this time and place.

He kisses her senseless, his hand curling around a fistful of her hair, slow, relentless, sensual. She can't remember ever being kissed like this before, but then it might be all a trick of memory. After all, it's been so long since the last time she was getting laid on a regular basis, and even longer since she last let her guard down enough to find reprieve in it.

A long, shuddering breath escapes her when it's over, and she can feel his breath heavy on her skin before her eyes flutter open to find his eyes on her, burning with an intensity that makes her lightheaded.

She tilts her head slightly and his palm is against her cheek, the pad of his thumb caressing the outline of her lower lip. His thumb smoothes across her mouth, back and forth, and his eyes are liquid blue fire, threatening and promising at once.

Surprising, that one as conniving as James Ford can get so _raw_ (no other word for it, really) at given occasions, but what's truly shocking is how this sexual fever she seems to have caught heightens a few degrees in response, thawing her muscles like butter.

His hands run over her back as his hot mouth claims hers again and soon their bodies are an aroused tangle of limbs, sweat, and half-hanging items of clothing.

Juliet recovers a temporary sanity by finding herself splayed out on her bed, a wet mouth skillfully teasing her bare chest, hands grinding her hips into the mattress with their tight grip.

Her flesh is pliant and yielding under another's pressure, her fingers thread through soft hair while lips taunt her nipples with a tugging, moist heat.

She moans with pleasure as teeth scrape her collarbone as she scratches his tense back and collects his deep growl of appreciation. Her fingers trace and memorize a sharp-nailed trail over his ribs and spine, his harsh panting reverberating around her.

A tongue dips into her navel and her whole body jolts, arching up to meet James's hungry mouth.

He pins her down like he's trying to prove a point, determined to hold at bay the urgency that has dictated their previous encounters, and she doesn't know whether she should be alarmed or flattered by his obvious intent to subject her to all of his 'repertoire'.

She doesn't care, either, and that's weird considering how hesitant she has been in the past to leave men in charge of her body (another scar Edmund has left her with, thank you).

Perhaps she has grown to trust James a bit more than even she expected.

Nibbling kisses pave the path across her stomach to her inner thighs, lingering there for longer than she is comfortable, his tongue rediscovering lines and hollows left unattended for a long time. When he finally dives in to taste her, fingering her aching nub at the same splendid, magnificent, tremendous moment, every part of her is startled awake at once. Her hunger grows and grows, and all she can do about that is toss her head from side to side and pull at his hair until oblivion eclipses her completely and she has became nothing but the mad rush of her blood singing in her veins, every smaller figment of her pulsating with desire and _life_.

James crawls up to her slowly, his arms trembling slightly, and his face is that of a familiar stranger, utterly and beautifully transfigured by need. His handsome face flushed, his blonde locks a mess, his pale eyes alive with a dark light of which she never had a glimpse before – not on him, at least- he flashes a predatory smirk to her.

"You taste just like a slice of heaven. I might do this all night along," his husky voice delivers, loaded with innuendo. Juliet barely recognizes this strange hybrid of Sawyer and James until she takes notice of the tension in the set of his shoulders.

It dawns on her that he must be _nervous _– the reason why, she can't imagine: why should he want to _impress her_? - but there's hardly time or chance to say or do anything about that, assuming she could have found the right words, the right gesture to bridge the gap between them.

All he needs to do is lick his lips clean of her: it's indeed the most erotic thing a man has ever done to her (or, if you must be literal, in front of her) and she can't help her instinctive response to it.

She assaults his mouth with an eagerness he doesn't lose any time returning, tasting herself and something uniquely _him_ on his tongue.

"James," she whispers on his mouth, her eyes on his, and it's only one surprised grasp after he is rolling his hips and pushing into her in one swift, powerful thrust.

"How come you feel always so good?" he groans into her neck, awe and desire twisting between his stunted words, dragging a victorious grin out of her. She has never felt quite as desirable as she does now.

Juliet bites down on the inside of her cheek as she feels him slide deeper, a whimper rising from the back of her throat.

"Fuck," he curses harshly, squeezing his eyes shut and pulling out of her slowly, like the action's taking him a great deal of effort, only to slam back in, _hard_.

She can feel her jaw slackening and her thighs quivering while he moves inside her, building up a pace so excruciatingly pleasurable (too prolonged outs, fast and fierce ins) that is forcing her to tear up, so she presses her cheek against the ridge of his shoulder and lets out a trembling, drawn-out moan while she rises her knees higher around his ribcage and squeezes him tighter.

The indefinable, animalistic sound that brutally tears its way out of his throat in reply is sufficient confirmation that she is affecting him just as badly he affects her.

It reassures her, easing her into her nearing climax. Her walls tremble around him, pulling him deeper avidly and she can only mouth his name into air, the sensation of his lips slanting over her earlobe and aptly silencing the grunt she can feel trembling along the column of his throat.

Possessively, boldly, scandalously her hands travel down to cup and grip the muscular flesh of his ass-cheeks, in an unmistakable invitation to further invade her slick depths.

"Jules," James satisfies her unspoken request repeatedly, her nickname an unrelenting chant on his tongue that goads them both toward the ultimate peak, and suddenly they are there, on the brink, and falling _together._

***

"You know what they say about nightly encounters sweetheart. Twice with the same person is casual, thrice is a relationship. " He will joke after, when they are both conscious and sated but still entwined, reluctant to part in their insecure ignorance of what comes next.

"It doesn't need to be," she sighs, rolling her eyes heavenwards for effect, testing him because she can't be the first to step towards anywhere this thing between them is going.

James breathes in a bit too deeply, then ventures, his lips ghosting over her nape so his voice will brush along her skin to elicit a shiver from her, when he speaks anew. "What if I want it to be?"

The tone is light, but everything is too deliberate to not give his true intentions away. She smiles, turning into his loose embrace to face him. "That would be okay, too."

In the end, Juliet stays because Love has never been _that_ kind to her, but James is.

**End**

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